


Jamais vu

by dawittiest



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (lbr Mattie's at least a little manic), (or at least Dubiously-Consensual), Ableism, Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe - Genderswap, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Morality, F/F, Gleeful Misandry, Heterosexual Economy, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Misogyny, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Linear Narrative, Reckless Behavior, Sexism, Threat of Sexual Violence, Unhealthy Relationships, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-01 13:20:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16765942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawittiest/pseuds/dawittiest
Summary: Elektra does everything the hard way – parties hard, hits hard, and laughs hardest of all. Mattie’s good at that game.But Elektra isn’t playing.





	Jamais vu

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haemophilus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemophilus/gifts).



> Bio/haemophilus does THE BEST prompts and I wanted to write them all. But I settled on a Mattie/Elektra sapphic Manic Train because. Mattie/Elektra sapphic Manic Train. (LOOK, Matt just _works_ as a lesbian).
> 
> I hope I tagged appropriately for everything, but just expect all the crazy that Elektra brings with her; this is a ~~better~~ sapphic retelling of Matt and Elektra’s tumultuous relationship in college. It’s rated M, be advised though that there is a short descriptive sex scene, but not like _porn_ descriptive, so I didn’t want to be puritanical. Oh, and there’s some vague/brief homophobia that I didn’t think warranted a tag.
> 
> Thanks for betaing this to: sleepyMoritz for all the helpful comments and DancingPlague for her endless patience<3
> 
> Bio, hope you enjoy it at least half as much as I did writing this. Because this fic was so! much! fun!

“Did you ever try to find that piece of shit?” Elektra asks her, tumultuous note in the timbre of her voice.

Mattie closes her eyes.

Finding the bastard who killed her father wasn’t hard. She supposes it would be more difficult now – but a few years ago, when Roscoe Sweeney hadn’t yet gone into retirement, it only took shaking a few threads loose for his name to pop out. He’s moved on from fixing boxing games to trading in women; the underworld must be a cutting-edge business. You don’t learn to swim fast, you’re gonna drown. If the sharks don’t get to you first. She thinks it’s all the same to him, whose lives he ruins.

Mattie remembers standing on the other side of the street, a curtain of seeping copper-penny rain between them. Opposite her, a whorehouse, buzzing with slips sashaying, uproarious laughs, screams. Bastard’s done well for himself. Here he is, grunting with satisfaction, pushing a girl around nonchalantly, ever-exchanging his dirty money, the man who murdered her father.

She remembers seeing it so clearly, in technicolor of senses so bright for a moment it felt like she never was blind, stepping into that musty rain, crossing the street to that bordello lit up like a lighthouse, shouldering through over-perfumed and under-rested women and booze-stinking men, and standing in front of Roscoe Sweeney. _Who the hell are you?_ he would’ve said. _Remember Battlin’ Jack Murdock?_ Mattie would’ve said. _He had a little girl._ Her lips would’ve twisted with bitter humor. Her fist would’ve clenched. _The one with the_ handicap _. Ever wonder what happened to that girl?_

_Daddy’s little girl’s all grown up._

She opens her eyes before the impact.

“What for?”

Elektra momentarily halts her aimless circling around the gym.

“To get revenge,” she says, like smirking. “Pay back his blood, take a little blood for your own.” She leans against the ropes and slants up her chin. The cut-outs in her sleeves brush against her biceps. “But you didn’t answer the question,” she comments. “Did you?”

Mattie shakes her head, _does it matter?_

“When I was a kid,” she says. “Went nowhere. Learned to live with it.” She grunts. “He probably went underground.”

Elektra jumps into the ring.

“Well, six feet, I hope.”

Mattie leans her forearms on the ropes. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t.”

Mattie pulls her lips, acerbic. “Would be the first.”

Elektra stills, regarding her. Mattie swallows down a shudder; it feels vaguely predatory.

“I bet there are _so many men_ lining up to save you.” Mattie barks out a laugh. “A pretty little orphan like you with a sob story. And blind, at that! Just makes you want to protect her from this unfair, cruel world.” A muscle in Mattie’s jaw ticks. She’s no man’s pretty little thing. “Men,” Elektra spews derisively. “I bet some are even nice about it. It’s the worst, isn’t it?” she asks rhetorically, conversationally. “You want to stuff his empathetic feelings and his soft things he wants to huddle you up in down your sweet, well-meaning friend’s throat before he suffocates you with it.”

Mattie feels like she should protest, defend his _honor_ , _Foggy’s not like that_ , but he _is_ , in some ways, in many ways, and she’s tired, tired and so resentful. She stays silent.

“But I’ve seen it,” Elektra says, her voice sweet like venom and stinging like praise. “You’re not a helpless, fluffy blind kitten. You play at it.” She shrugs. “But you haven’t been declawed. You still remember it in your bones how our ancestors used to eat men.”

Mattie laughs, guarded. “Okay.”

Elektra hums, coyly, beckoning with her finger. “Mmm? Kitty, kitty-cat…” Mattie climbs into the ring after her.

“I feel like I’ve told you more in the last ten minutes that I’ve told anyone else in ten years.”

When the kick comes, Mattie’s body acts on pure instinct. The thought comes after. Elektra drop-kicked her. And she ducked.

“Ha! I knew it.” Elektra’s heart’s soar is triumphant.

“You knew what?” Mattie asks, stalling for time. How did Elektra find out? What’s her agenda? Can she still try and salvage her secret?

More importantly, does Mattie care?

Elektra goes to punch her and Mattie blocks, finds that she doesn’t regret it, parries Elektra’s thunder of blows and holds Elektra against her chest with ease. They’re both just testing their strength. And liking it.

“You said you were blind,” Elektra says, heaving, exhilarated.

Mattie pushes her off.

“Didn’t say I was handicapped,” she counters, and tears her sunglasses off, sends them scattering into the dark corners outside of the ring. There’s only the ring. And the devil has no use for human props.

“How does that work?” Elektra demands, circling her.

“It’s complicated.”

Elektra punches her then and skin breaks; maybe some time she’ll sit with Elektra and want to explain the fire and brimstone of her senses – she does want to, oh she knew, she knew Elektra _understood_ – find comfort in letting herself be known with the only person that might be strong enough to take the heavy load of it. The heavy load of her. Take _her_. But now, she has no needs other than the sweet burst of her blood on her pulsing lip and the firm thump her fist makes when it meets Elektra’s flesh. She grunts and Elektra takes a sharp inhale. The red-headed monster inside her is waking.

“What about you?” Mattie gasps out. “You said you took ballet lessons.”

“I did,” Elektra agrees. They tangle again and part both panting. “In the winters, when my capoeira master returned to Angola.”

“Muay Thai?” Mattie says with a chuckle.

“Every other Thursday,” Elektra parries breathlessly.

“Of course.”

Elektra’s fist connects with her jaw. Mattie licks her bloody lips. She grins.

“You got me.”

“Get me back,” Elektra breathes out. It doesn’t feel the silly game they were playing at till now.

She sucker-punches her.

“ _Get me!_ ”

Mattie blinks and for a moment she only sees red.

She obliges her. They’re trading blows and it’s for real, rush of fists and oh-so-satisfying flare of pain, and Elektra cuts her knees from under her and Mattie falls, out of breath, on her back.

Elekta’s body presses on her as she whispers in Mattie’s ear. “I win.”

But Mattie’s not a loser.

She throws Elektra off her and pins her down. “Not when I can still get back up, you don’t,” she whispers.

“ _My dad, he was the boxer_ ,” Elektra intones back at her. “Did he let his princess sometimes in the ring? Taught his little girl to fight in the world of bad men like the ones that killed him?” She’s curious, not teasing, and Mattie can’t figure her out at all.

“Nah,” she says wryly. “Dad didn’t think this world was no place for a girl _.” Looking at you, you wouldn’t believe your old man could’ve a hand in something so perfect. Shi—you’re gonna grow up a proper lady, not like your brawler of a father. So beautiful, my Mattie. And smart. And good._ Before he died, he told her: _Promise me you won’t forget this old prizefighter when you make it out of here._

She elbows Elektra in the chin.

“Had to learn to be a tough girl all by myself.”

Elektra laughs, sparkling.

“If only daddy could see you now.”

Mattie doesn’t want to think about her dad; she wrestles Elektra to the ground again.

Elektra gets the upper hand, of course she does, but struggling against her is its own kind of sweet release. She presses her forearm down on Mattie’s throat – presses hard, never delicate – and bends her head over her, her silky hair spilling in a waterfall on Mattie’s face.

“You’re so much more than he thought,” Elektra purrs. “We’re so much more than they ever think, overflowing the tight spaces they try to cage us in.” Elektra brushes her finger over Mattie’s swollen mouth; Mattie bites her. Elektra slaps her, delighted. “We’re bigger,” she whispers. “Meaner. Louder.”

“Tougher,” Mattie pants, buckling under her. But she’s not trying to get out, she’s lingering; down where her legs meet she’s tingling.

“Sharper,” Elektra agrees. “We’d murder them all. It’d be a bloodbath.”

“ _Fuck_ them,” Mattie says with feeling. Elektra’s right; why did she ever want to be one of the guys, be allowed into their closed-door little club, when the two of them, they _take_ , and they reach places so much further than that?

“Fuck men,” Elektra echoes. Her knee grinds hard against her pubis and Mattie keens. Elektra’s hand slides forcefully into her hair and tightens. “They’re long obsolete, them and their small world. We should just put them out of their misery.”

“You and me?” Mattie groans as Elektra rolls her hips; Elektra’s chest is moving like a wild animal, she can _smell_ her from here.

“Fuck all the rest,” Elektra says and bites into her neck. “And _fuck me_.”

Mattie scrambles to strip off Elektra’s shirt and Elektra’s deft hands already have it off—Mattie palms a smooth expense of skin because Elektra doesn’t have a bra, Mattie could feel how hard her nipples are on her tongue before she even got her lips around them. Elektra lets out a spiked breath; she lets Mattie taste her breast, tender, and salty, before she gets tired of it and shoves Mattie to the ground. Mattie’s glad to be shoved. Her hand twists in Mattie’s hair – _shit_ – and Elektra squeezes the other between them, into Mattie’s slacks, and digs inside her through the material of her panties.

Mattie grinds her pelvis into the hellish pressure of Elektra’s palm, rolls her hips with abandon. She can’t get enough, it’s pain, it’s an onslaught, and Elektra has a finger on her clit, her pulse. Merciless, is how she fucks, like a livewire, and her heartbeat is kicking into overdrive, she smells like sea salt, and feels like something primal under Mattie’s hands, and her skin tastes like dopamine and exertion-sweat. Mattie tries to hold on, tries to grab a piece of Elektra for her own – her sweet hair, her breasts, lick into her soft lips – and Elektra yanks her down by her hair, _tears, pain_ , ruts against her own hand fucking Mattie.

“You can tell me,” Elektra breathes. She combs Mattie’s scruffy hair behind her ears, tacky forehead and labored breath caressing her face. “Tell me. I feel it too. Tell me all.” And Mattie wants, to have the words to voice it all – how her body is hulking, how softness has always been too fragile for her crude fists. How she only has wailing violence in her black devil soul, how she’s too hard for good things, they chip in her grasp; how she’s always been a broken, cumbersome woman. But Elektra knows it all, knows it and absolves all, she knows what it feels like to have a heart that doesn’t work right and how it is to be an impostor in every room, she feels it too, and Mattie’s tearing unclean skin might as well be her own. Their own.

Her blood flow is so loud in her ears – or is it Elektra’s – and Mattie grips blindly at Elektra, drags her nails down her pure back, scrapes some of the perfect skin under her fingernails. Elektra moans, arching her back like a cat – she’s putting on a show and she’s not, the play is where she lives. Their smells mingle together in a world-spinning gulp that goes straight to her head, savory and sultry. Mattie’s shirt is riding up to her chin, soaked wet, Elektra’s hand writhes between them like a seething beast, breaths racing, her soft-firm body like a peach bruises under Mattie’s touch, it feels like a losing battle, it _hurts_ , and Heaven has the name of Elektra.

Jazz taps a polite melody on the walls of the party, like knuckles rapping unobtrusively on a polished wooden table. Meandering conversations spoken in a half-tone echo in a breathy chorus. The people, the drinks, the air, all smell and feel subtle. Understated. And _expensive_ – it’s even in the way the sound diffuses in-between the space they occupy, respectful, and languid like it has all the time in the world.

Mattie’s an intruder. In the very sense, yes, but also—her dress is off-the-rack, chain store, her hair is just washed and combed away, cut cheap. She has some things going for her – the dress looks tasteful, she’s told, and her body fills in all the dress is lacking, and her pretty face can make up for a lot of things; too bad about the glasses. She doesn’t think she can work the blind thing with this crowd. _A nice, resolute girl_ is not gonna do her any favors here.

She’s not so sure about all this – in the smelly warmth settled around the dorm rec room, emboldened by beer-giggles and Foggy’s earnest egging on, the perspective of infiltrating this exclusive party felt more glamorous. But it feels like everything feels – holding in her breath and forcing a toothless smile.

That’s okay; Mattie’s an expert in molding herself to size. She can be sharper. She can be charming. She’s gonna need some alcohol.

The bar. Mattie tilts her head. Glasses bell-ring-a-ringing. Clink… clink… clink… a lazy cascade. Not glass. Bracelets. An idle finger circling the rim of a drink, glass humming hypnotically. A vodka-sip. Musk and steel.

Who is this woman?

“Are you looking for something?”

Mattie blinks. There’s a man, high-blood pressure pulse, fine leather shoes, standing in her way. Addressing her.

“Sorry, is that insensitive?” he says pro forma, not apologetic in the slightest. Confident in his place. “It just looked like you’re searching for someone. Are you?”

She shakes herself and forces out a stammer, “I’m, I-I’m sorry, I was just…”

The man raises his hands palms-out, a generous gesture.

“It’s okay, I won’t tell if you won’t.” He gives her a wink. “You’re a perfectly gracious young lady, maybe waiting for her father or an uncle.” Another wink.

The woman at the bar is listening in on the conversation, her attention mildly piqued. She’s young and gorgeous, alone, sipping on a vodka martini without a hurry in the world; she fits in effortlessly among this crowd, yet there’s no reason for her to be here. Mattie doesn’t know why, but she finds herself endlessly intent on finding out what the mystery woman’s deal is.

“So what’s a girl like you doing, sneaking into a party like this?” The man’s still talking to her. “Want a taste of the high life?” He indicates all around him, as if he, himself, was the host who solely could extend an invitation – or not. He leans in confidentially. “You don’t have to sneak around, sweetheart. I’m sure there’s plenty men who’d feel honored to have your charming presence here at their side.”

He wants her, Mattie realizes. He presents like her father might’ve presented, if life had been kinder to him, and he _wants_ her. Mattie at once feels very young, and repulsive, and cold.

“I—” If she turns him down, will he call security? Will he grab her bare arm and refuse to take no for an answer, make a scene? Will he try to feel her up if she stays and parries his come-ons politely? Should she let him?

“She’s blind, not dumb,” the woman at the bar speaks up. They both start in her direction. “I’m sure your mistress is missing you.”

The heart spikes in the man’s chest and his cheeks flare with indignation. He touches Mattie’s shoulder curtly – she jolts, shudder bolting through her spine at the sweaty palm print – something in the woman’s voice compelling indisputable compliance, and takes his leave, disappearing in the mingling crowd.

Mattie exhales.

“Thanks,” she says, more or less collapsing into the seat at the woman’s side.

She catches the bartender’s attention.

“Hi, um, I’m gonna have a Macallan, neat, and uh,” she pauses, tips her face slightly toward the woman, “another vodka martini.”

“Perceptive,” the woman notes, her tone like quirking a brow.

“Thank you, I try,” Mattie says back, biting on a grin.

“But I know what I want.” She addresses the bartender. “Tequila. Mezcal, if you have it.”

 _Ooff_. Okay, let’s try this again.

“Do you often have to fend off, uh, over-eager businessmen?”

The woman doesn’t twitch a muscle. The corner of her lips, maybe.

“There are pigs everywhere. These ones just learned how to use the correct fish knife.”

Mattie laughs.

“Nice pendant,” the woman remarks. Mattie touches her collarbone self-consciously. “Vintage?”

Thrift store, more like. “How’d you know?”

“You can tell a lot about a girl by her accessorizing.” Mattie goes hot instantly, like a punch, but a pull too. She wants to prove this woman wrong.

“I—I could surprise you.” The woman half-sighs, half-groans.

“Doubt it.” Mattie jerks her chin up, pushes out her lip. _Alright_.

“Alright.” She downs her drink and sets it on the bar top with intent. “You, uh, wanna give it a try?”

The woman drags out a breath like it’s a chore, but she’s still playing, so Mattie knows she’s hooked too. “Fine.” She inclines her head, not looking at her. “You desperately want to prove something. You want to show everyone, anyone, that you’re more than just a good Catholic girl you’ve been all your life, which is the real reason you sneak into high-end cocktail parties. You dress up like a porcelain Mary-Jane doll, but you drink the same scotch your daddy drinks,” Mattie snickers at that, “because you want the world to know you can be tough but a woman too. It’s cute. And now, your mind is racing.” Mattie shifts in her seat. “You’ve been the brightest girl in the room your entire life, but here is this woman, who’s everything you never were and secretly envied, and you frantically search for something to say, so you can keep this fantasy of being _that girl_ for that much longer.”

The woman leans back in her seat and looks at Mattie head-on for the first time.

“You know what your problem is?” she says, taking a snappy turn. “You’re witty. You’ve got that whole handicapable thing going.” she waves at Mattie’s person flippantly, “But you’re dull. You’ve lost without even allowing yourself to acknowledge the game.”

“Daddy was a Johnnie Walker man,” Mattie bites back. The woman makes a tired throaty sound. “And _lapsed_ Catholic.”

“Of course,” the woman says, dismissive.

Mattie takes a breath and straightens her spine. She has an absurd urge to raise her fists.

“You wanna know what I think?” The woman sighs.

“ _Tell_ me.”

“I think the game is just on.” The woman scoffs in derision. “Because despite your impeccable façade, and hundred-dollar liquor to get drunk on… Despite growing up a rich spoiled-rotten princess and having men and women throw themselves at your feet to please you, you’re just bored.”

The woman’s pulse quickens in her ribcage. “Really?” she says laconically.

“So bored you entertain yourself by toying with a random girl you happened upon at a party,” Mattie fires back. “I think you were _dying_ on the vine of this tight-ass party, because this luxury and caprice all the money in the world can buy you, there’s one thing you can’t have that you really need.”

The woman turns her face at Mattie, her breath piqued and voice full of promise.

“And what’s that?”

Mattie raises the corner of her lip.

“A challenge.”

Mattie’s blood gushes inside her and she knows in her bones she got it right. Somehow this girl has a mysterious pull on her, and now Mattie has one over her too.

“Maybe you’re not so dull,” the woman allows.

Mattie’s veins sing in victory.

“Elektra Natchios,” the woman extends.

“Mathilde Murdock,” Mattie answers.

Elektra Natchios takes a last sip of her tequila and slides off the seat. “Follow me,” a deliberate pause, “Mathilde.”

Mattie does, and she’s halfway across the room when it occurs to her to ask _where_.

“Where are we going?” Elektra doesn’t answer at once.

“Where the real party is.” Mattie’s eyebrows ride up.

“Which is…”

Elektra clicks her tongue with humor. “Oh, but if I tell you, it will suck out all the fun,” she says with a brilliant spark. “Live a little spontaneously, Mathilde.”

Mattie doesn’t know if she likes the way Elektra’s voice – _Elektra_ – curls around her name, both fond and condescending, and she doesn’t know if she likes playing the shy duckling to Elektra’s bad girl, but maybe she’s bored too; maybe she’s been parched for a little adventure, so she follows the impulse to run along with whatever this sparkling, strange girl has a fancy to do.

(It’s right, Mattie thinks. She’s electrifying. Elektra struck her like a bolt of lightning.)

Mattie fixes her hair anxiously – she was trying a thing and it’s just growing out, getting all in her face and tickling her jaw. She feels like a schoolgirl, with her (safe) conservative dress and short nest on her head that won’t be any hairstyle at all. Elektra’s hair is perfect like her, slick, a flowing off-the-shoulder river. Mattie’s an awkward girl-child while Elektra’s a woman.

Elektra walks with self-possession of a woman ten years her senior, but she must be Mattie’s peer, can’t be more than few years older. This must be a role she’s been used to playing, the dazzling precocious missy smart-mouth, used to getting her way with a sharp tongue and coy smile, mature young woman making her father proud. Mattie wonders if this is something she had to learn from a young age.

She leads Mattie away from the murmuring shindig, down the carpeted corridor, disturbed by no one. This part of the house is quiet; their silenced steps vibrate in a soft wave through the carpet and echo on the heavy painting frames. They reach an ornate vestibule, that feels like a museum, but it, too, is deserted. Mattie follows Elektra’s light feet up a grand staircase; she trails her hand along the oak handrail, too thick for her girl’s hands, in an almost reverent silence, trips over a plush step not for show. She has trouble wrapping her head around the grandiosity of it all, oil paint, kurk wool, mahogany, the _opulence_ of it, how the sound coils up to the sculpted high ceilings and reflects back at her in a way that makes her spin. Mattie stops only at the mid-staircase, distracted by the cacophony of this quiet.

She doesn’t want to be a drag, she really doesn’t. “Are we trespassing?” she says against her will. She feels like she should speak in a whisper.

Elektra hangs back and slowly spins around to face her, still poised on the step above.

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?” she says curiously. “This party is hosted by Hugo Natchios,” she says, opens her arms wide. “This is my father’s estate.”

“You—” Mattie reels slightly. “All this belongs to your family?”

Elektra hums with disinterest and resumes her ascend up the stairs. “My family owns a lot of property. This is just one of them. It mostly stands empty in the year as a monument to my father’s vanity. A shame you can’t really appreciate all his pretty _bric-à-brac_ , but I think we can find something to grip your attention.” She glances carelessly over her shoulder at Mattie and adds, “Coming?”

Mattie takes in a breath and takes the next stair.

They step out onto the third floor, the same plush carpeted floor that feels too precious to soil with her feet, but if the vestibule felt like a museum, this feels like a disinhabited palace. There are cameras in every corner, their discrete buzz following them overhead, and Mattie distantly thinks it weird, an ever-present watcher surveilling above a living residence. Though, she supposes, it’s only right. Half the things here must be more valuable than some exhibited in museums.

Elektra stops at some concealed keypad, lost on Mattie, and her nimble fingers dance over the interface until the buzzing cuts off. Mattie doesn’t think to question it. She likes having some privacy. She likes whatever Elektra has planned being intimate.

“Have you ever actually lived here?” Mattie asks wonderingly. She smells silk sheets behind heavy doors. Bathing oils, shampoo. An armoire filled with clothes; _perfume_. Not a gossamer layer of dust. She tracks a finger pad along the downside of a dresser top – porcelain, crystal? – rubs her fingers together. Clean.

“Not really,” Elektra responds, a soft lull in her voice, almost-considering. “I like my penthouse better. Whenever I’m in New York, I usually stay there. Or the brownstone.” She shrugs. “I find this place rather drab.”

Mattie has to laugh at that.

“And yet it’s kept in a perfect functional state,” she observes, not really a question. She shakes her head; they could run a hotel from here. An exclusive hotel. “Why?”

She means, _why be so much wasteful_?

Elektra preens.

“For occasions like this.” She pushes a two-wing door open with a flourish.

A cool gust of air crashes over Mattie. Vast space. The room is bigger than the rest on this floor, from what she can gauge. A cross between a master bedroom and a parlor – it reminds her of those you can find in XIX century residences, a thick, round carpet in the middle of the ribbed hardwood floor, authentic, a hand-painted tile fireplace – not used in a while, if ever, pearly-drop crystal candelabras, a period drawing desk, the ones used only to write hand letters, a vanity, colonial, separate from it, even a bed with tall columns and canopy, the fabric so fresh it must’ve been washed and aired this morning. It doesn’t even scream old money; it screams _royalty_.

Elektra steps unreservedly onto the carpet – no doubt infinitely valuable and one of a kind – her stilettos digging in, tearing at the reticularly-woven threads. Mattie lingers in the doorway, reluctant to cross the threshold. It’s like there’s an invisible yet all the more glaring line cordoning her from that puzzling, unattainable world. Crossing it would be something of an unpardonable transgression.

Elektra though doesn’t seem to pay her any mind; she strolls the room, almost bored, musing, as if toying with whatever idea she might pick up next. “Sit, kick up your heels,” she says over her shoulder, offhand, more a command than anything else. “Make yourself comfortable.” Mattie wouldn’t dare think she might ever get comfortable in a place to which she’s so much a stranger.

She crosses the threshold.

There’s not really anything to sit on, so she traverses over to the bed, lowers herself onto it carefully, apprehensive to put her weight on it at first, and then gives it an experimental bounce, considering. Then she flaps down, crosses her – shoe-clad – legs on the covers—if she’s being audacious, she might as well go all out, right?

Elektra straightens up from scouring through a cabinet, a pair of crystal glasses and a heavy carafe of brandy in each hand. Mattie lets out an unwilling laugh. Of _course_.

The glass clinks on polished wood – the antique vanity, no coasters – and Elektra pours them two fingers each, spilling some brandy without care. Doesn’t wipe it down.

“So how is it?” Mattie tips her head, leaning back on her arms. She jerks her chin a bit. “This life, I mean?”

“It’s fantastic,” Elektra says, swerving to her with their drinks. She pushes one in Mattie’s face. “Drink up.”

Mattie reflexively closes her hand over the offered glass – Elektra’s slim fingers brush hers, dallying before they disappear – and obediently dips it to her mouth. Elektra taps their glasses together, _clink_.

She takes a hearty sip, same time as Elektra does, and almost spits it up. She screws up her face, faint horror hollowing her chest.

“ _Is there something in this drink_?” she chokes out. Elektra sighs.

“Don’t worry, I’m not _drugging_ you.” She knocks a manicured nail on her glass, reconsidering it. “Well,” she says. “I didn’t give you anything I’m not taking myself.”

Mattie carefully sets the brandy glass on the frame at the foot of the bed.

“What… what was in it,” she asks weakly. Elektra audibly rolls her eyes and waves her hand noncommittally.

“Prescription pills,” she says, casual. “I suffer from _grueling_ migraines,” she drawls. “Oh, relax, it’s all perfectly legal.” Mattie wants to contest it. “It’s medicine!”

Mattie struggles to find her words – what does it _do_ , this is a supremely bad idea, with her _senses_ , what if— _when_ —it sends them haywire? – meanwhile Elektra walks back to the vanity and pours herself another finger but sets it on the counter top. She gazes at Mattie again. “Oh, don’t be a baby,” she says with reproach. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been introduced to a little recreational drugs before.”

 _Don’t be a pussy, girlie_. Mattie swallows past the echo of Stick’s words.

She downs the drink.

Elektra perks up. She tips her drink to her lips, one elegant finger uncrooked, and sips it up. She throws the half-drunk glass to the floor.

The crystal splinters into thousand little pieces, a drizzle of crushed shards. Some of the liquor pools onto the precious carpet, sinking into the fabric.

“That sounded expensive,” Mattie remarks, her throat dry, indicating the glass and the carpet both. She takes a nervous gulp of her drink, but there’s only a few drops.

Elektra tucks her cheek into one shoulder. “I’m guessing.” Like she doesn’t know the price behind the lavishness she’s living in. She probably doesn’t. “ _I don’t care_.”

She’s expecting Mattie to do something, so, pulled by some inexplicable sway, Mattie chucks her own glass on the floor, joining Elektra’s. It shatters, a jarring sound, as Elektra’s heartbeat quickens. The right answer, then.

“I want to show you something.” Elektra leans to the bottom cabinet of the vanity, blows a strand of her flowing hair from her face.

Mattie slides off the bed, wavering slightly, stands over Elektra.

“What is it?” It’s a safe, obviously. Mattie can’t sense much of what it is within its thick walls, other than something bijou and valuable; a lot of vacant space.

“The only thing in here worth your attention,” Elektra says mysteriously. She taps at the safe knob, _tap… tap… tap_. “I seem to have forgotten the code,” she muses. A lie. She’s not supposed to touch it. They shouldn’t be here. Mattie elbows Elektra gently aside and gets her own hand on it. Elektra sits back on her heels letting her work.

She puts her ear to the safe, though she doesn’t really need to. She turns the knob assiduously, gingerly, for Elektra’s benefit – if she was really concerned about that, she wouldn’t be doing this in front of her in the first place – and unhurriedly locates all the right clicks. The safe door latches open.

“Where did you learn that,” Elektra says, pointed with curiosity. Appreciative. She’s impressed.

Mattie shrugs. “Told you I could surprise you.” It’s her turn to be cryptic now.

Elektra gives her one last lingering look and reaches into the safe; she retrieves a flat velvet box, the size of her open palms. Mattie touches around the bottom of the safe to second-check. Nothing else.

“Diamonds?” Mattie asks, arching her eyebrow.

“Hmm,” Elektra hums. “Go on, open it.”

Mattie’s hands are trembling as they lift the lid carefully with soft pads of her middle fingers. She half holds her breath. Elektra’s silent, expecting, so Mattie gently, very gently, trails her fingers over the string of beads. She removes her hands.

“A necklace?”

Elektra gives a suppressed chuckle.

“A necklace worth millions in blood,” she tells her. “It’s red emerald. The rarest gemstone in the world.”

Mattie’s hand drifts back to the necklace against her and curls just shy of touching it. “It’s beautiful,” she tells Elektra honestly.

Elektra hums indifferently. “It is a rather pretty bauble, isn’t it?” she remarks. Mattie wants to say it’s much more than that; the air crashes and plummets along the cordilleras of it, turbulent, an intricate embroidery of space and crystalline thorns. It’s elusive like water, and the most complex mesmerizing pattern she’s ever come across. Mattie wonders how something so lithe and fragile can be so cutting. She can almost feel the spikes piercing her tongue. The taste of red. “It’s a shame to let it sit wasting away in a hidden safe locker.”

Elektra picks up the necklace, pinched between two fingernails, and dangles it cheekily. Mattie absurdly holds out her palms, to catch it if it were to fall.

Elektra raises to one knee, and stands up; the necklace swings with her, like clockwork, hypnotizing, and Mattie finds herself swaying lightly to its rhythm. It’s not possible the drugs kicked in already, right? She shouldn’t feel so much in a trance.

“Let’s try it on,” Elektra says. It was made to grace Elektra’s skin, Mattie thinks. Just as sharp and beautiful. She offers out her hands, but Elektra laughs softly.

“Not _me_. You.”

Mattie stares.

“Me?” Elektra huffs with exasperation.

“Yes, silly.” Somehow the word on her lips sounds ruthless, makes Mattie snap at attention. “It so doesn’t go with my dress.”

Mattie opens her mouth to say, _well, it definitely doesn’t go with_ my _dress_ and, _it doesn’t go with_ me. But Elektra’s already maneuvering her around without even touching her and brushes the hair from the nape of Mattie’s neck, not much being there to brush away. “Hold it for me?” Elektra murmurs, her mixed alcohol breath ghosting hotly on her skin. Mattie shivers. It smells like a flower bouquet, she thinks nonsensically. Stupid thought. She raises her arms dutifully, holding up her choppy short-ish hair out of the way for Elektra, who inserts herself firmly into Mattie’s space, loops the necklace tight around her neck. It feels weighty on her collarbones. Cool. Elektra’s nail scratches her as she secures it above the jutting knob of her spine.

“One more thing,” Elektra says, the vibrations going deep into her flesh. She hooks a finger under Mattie’s thrift store pendant and tears it off with one swift motion. The chain-link snaps and Mattie gasps.

“Oh,” she says. She touches the hollow of her throat and finds just sharp edges.

“Much better,” Elektra asserts. Her hand with the pendant disappears in her purse. Mattie clenches her fist stupidly.

“I—” She shifts with unease. “I thought it was nice,” she says, a childish edge to it. Foggy said so; Foggy helped her pick it out. He said she looked pretty.

“Oh, sweetie, you can do so much better than _nice_ ,” Elektra mouths into her skin; soft and hard in equal parts. Mattie swallows.

Elektra rests her chin on Mattie’s shoulder and snakes her arms around her. Mattie’s skin itches, on fire; she’s not used to so much physical contact. She’s never really had girl-friends.

“How do I look?” she asks, trying to sound more dry than fretful, but it comes out too breathy and all wrong.

Elektra grins against her shoulder.

“Like I could eat you up.”

Mattie squirms. Elektra bumps her hips into Mattie, tugs her toward the door with an arm looped around her waist.

“Wait—” Mattie says. “Shouldn’t we—” she falters, vaguely referencing the cracked safe and the necklace sitting, brazen, on her cleavage.

“Oh, that?” Elektra says like an afterthought. “The next security sweep is at dawn. We’ll be safe for a couple hours.”

“That’s.” The words _grand theft_ are fluttering around her scattered mind. Elektra must see it on her face and lets out a groan.

“It belongs to my great-aunt,” she says, like it’s an explanation. “Besides, we’re just borrowing.” Pretty sure borrowing doesn’t involve cracking an armed vault. “We’ll have it back safe and sound in the morning and no one will ever know, I promise.”

“Are you sure I should be wearing it?” Even as she says it, Mattie runs her fingers over the gems hungrily. “It’s a family heirloom, your aunt…”

“The old hag is dead,” Elektra says peppily. “She won’t miss it. And really, I can’t have my date looking like she’s Vice-Miss Tenth Grade.”

“Your date?” Mattie repeats dumbly.

“It’s very exclusive,” Elektra assures her, floating gracefully past the question. “By reference only. There’s a certain dress code expected.”

“Are we doing something illegal tonight?” Mattie asks, wearing a stolen million-dollar necklace, already falling into step with Elektra. She’s so full of bullshit.

“Mmm…” Elektra says. “Depends on your definition of illegal.” She twirls a loose strand of her hair on her finger, chewing on her pouting lip. “Their paperwork might’ve… a few missing dots and crosses, here and there. But it’s _much_ more fun than Monte Carlo.” Her mouth curls around the words, all seduction and perfect charm. “ _I_ know.”

Oh, there’s so many reasons she shouldn’t.

Mattie grins. All teeth.

“I _am_ an excellent poker player.” She lowers her eyes coyly. “You could say I have real sixth sense for calling a bluff.”

“I’ll tell the cards for you,” Elektra promises. She crooks two sharp-tipped fingers at her. “Let’s go, Mathilde.”

Mattie takes Elektra’s cool hand in her own, a little damp from emotions and warm, and they leave the broken plundered room behind.

So that’s how it is lately—

“Have you ever seen a pool at night?” Elektra asks her.

Mattie hasn’t; so they go. Elektra is a storehouse of ideas; she sets the pace and Mattie follows, without a complaint. Elektra says, _let’s trash the hotel room_ , and Elektra says, _let’s max out daddy’s American Express_ , and Elektra says, _fuck classes, let’s go to Miami, we can take a week’s cruise on a yacht I own, sunbathing and lazing around outrageously,_ and Mattie goes along, flies on Elektra’s dime across the coast, with this woman she’s known barely a month, two. They’re inseparable now; they sleep through the day tangled in Elektra’s silk sheets on king-size beds in one of her houses, or five star hotels if they’ve been out all night in an unfamiliar neighborhood and Elektra decided she doesn’t want to drive back to Manhattan – Mattie’s buying herself silk sheets if she ever sleeps in her own bed again, no way she’s going back to cotton – and they eat breakfast, not bothering with plates, sitting on Elektra’s marble kitchen counters as the sun sets. Mattie takes a shower in Elektra’s _amazing_ cabin, and Elektra pees in the bathroom at the same time and Mattie doesn’t think twice of it, it’s as natural as breathing, after Elektra dresses Mattie up in her own flowing clothes that smell like Elektra and womanhood, pokes her with makeup appliances and coos all over her. They hit the night, a never-ending weekend, whatever wild fancy strikes Elektra next. Mattie wants to rebel a little, if only on principle, push back against being Elektra’s pretty little thing to corrupt, but she _likes_ being Elektra’s pretty little thing to corrupt, even if being made up to Elektra’s liking feels at times like inhabiting a stranger’s body. Life is an endless slumber party, and Mattie spends her every waking moment from dusk to dawn with Elektra, spends her time asleep with Elektra’s drool pooling on her shoulder and Elektra hogging the blankets, and it doesn’t feel like they’ve just met. It feels like there’s never been a time when they weren’t together.

It’s like Mattie’s just there for a ride – the ride of her life – but Elektra’s wants feel like Mattie’s own might have felt, if she let herself stretch her cramped limbs for once without fear. _You could be so much more if you just allow yourself to be free_ , Elektra tells her. And the thing is, with Elektra, she is. Elektra’s shown her life’s so much bigger than she ever imagined, ever let herself – that there is this whole new _world_ that she’s been quietly yearning for in the depths of her loneliness, and by Elektra’s side it’s hers to grab with both fists.

Mattie never wants to go back.

Elektra takes a sudden veer in the car – a different car than the last time, one she’s also not supposed to have, Mattie suspects, though she hasn’t asked – and speeds off in the opposite direction, as if on a whim. Elektra does that – throws idle suggestions like she just thought of them, but Mattie has a feeling that Elektra’s actions are more calculated than she’d like her to think. Elektra likes to project this persona of a devil-may-care spontaneous party girl, but more than anything she likes to play games, and all games require a certain level of premeditation. Figuring out the rules is a thrill of its own, and Mattie’s getting _good_ at playing. Like Elektra, she’s always chasing the punch-sweet taste of the win.

They park the car nearly on the beach, and for a moment Mattie thinks that Elektra has changed her mind; but she promised her a pool. She follows Elektra along the boardwalk, until a humming drone of filtered water drifts to her ear. It sounds like a—condo, one of those fancy ones that come with its own gym and, apparently, a pool. A hotel, maybe.

It’s late in the night, so it must be closed, although it seems undisturbed by maintenance work or anyone. It’s peaceful. Like a desolate fantasy of a city deserted that’s theirs to wander.

“You have the keycard, right?”

Elektra sucks in her teeth, play-sheepish.

“What about the guards?” Mattie says, not a real concern. Elektra answers with a wicked chuckle.

“Why, we can always break their bones.” Mattie laughs.

She follows Elektra, scales the – pathetic – fence. Elektra holds her cane as she climbs; Elektra never treats her like she’s not capable. She races on and never waits for her on account of her _disadvantage_.

Mattie can’t wrap her head around so much _freedom_.

They land, sneakers and heels, on squealing tile floor. No one stops them. “Now what?” Mattie says. “We don’t have bathing suits.” Elektra’s already shucking her shoes and pulling her blouse over her head. She dangles the flimsy material on the tip of her impeccably manicured finger.

“Have you ever heard of the concept of skinny dipping?” she drawls her voice out, daring. “Last one’s fair prey!”

She throws her shirt in Mattie’s face, kicking off her skinny jeans, and Mattie has to laugh, Elektra’s energy is irresistible, so she yanks her own t-shirt over her head, skipping trying to pull off her shoe and her sock simultaneously, her sunglasses clattering somewhere on the floor. Elektra’s shrieking, unclasping her brassiere, and Mattie can’t be any worse, untangling herself from her sports bra, Elektra trips over her bustier shoving down her panties – lace, sheer – and Mattie shakes her shorts off along with her boxers, and they both spring into the pool, grabbing at their hands and laughing, at the same time.

Mattie thinks about how she first learned to swim, _I’m blind, Shit, girlie, guess that means you’re gonna drown._ Stick threw her into the deep end and left her to thrash; Elektra makes her want to take the jump.

“Guess it’s a tie,” Elektra purrs, lowering till her chin brushes the surface and her silken hair pools around her in a halo, as if she’s some water nymph, and Mattie shivers.

It’s a warm evening, lovely, but there’s something about the water, stroking so gently all around her naked body, that feels like she’s being caressed with cool fingers. Mattie’s always been fine with nudity, both other people’s and her own; it doesn’t really do much for her without the tactile sensation, and she feels bodies brushing against clothing all the time, so it’s become pretty much the background noise to her everyday life. But here, with Elektra—maybe it’s the water enveloping them both so tightly, Elektra’s warm, vibrant body sending waves toward her with every fluid kick of her limbs, or maybe it’s the intimacy of the moment, something forbidden and so far removed from anything she’s ever done before, but Mattie feels _naked_ , laid out completely bare, and _seen_ , her every dark hole and crevice, under Elektra’s scalpel-bright eyes.

It’s not an unpleasant feeling.

“It’s a shame you can’t see it,” Elektra says, drifting closer. Mattie feels her as if she’s rubbing her whole body, pulled towards her and pushed away at the same time with the currents, and she’s watching, mesmerized, their bodies swaying. “ _Tender is the night_ ,” Elektra says quietly, a light smile in her voice. “It’s velvet and all-encompassing. The sky is so dark and full with billows of clouds it’s violet, and the water is amethyst. The kind you can dive in for ages. It’s impossible to tell when the sky ends and the water begins, or if it’s all just a spectrum of the night, made from the same inky substance, maybe one slightly more viscous.” She laughs softly. “You can see the lights of the city, blinking afar – this is how cities are most appealing, aren’t they? From a distance.” She sighs, tilting her head gently floating, her upturned face grazed by soft waves. “ _Comme dans un rêve_.”

Mattie closes her eyes; she can hear, coming with a breeze, delighted shrieks and the bustling of the amusement parks, roller-coasters whooshing, music jingling, old machinery groaning and whining, corn popping, cotton candy whizzing so dizzy-fast she can almost taste sugar on her lips. A gentle hum comes from the ocean, salt and sand, a soothing touch, the water sashaying contently around her, around Elektra’s thrumming, tingling-hot body, so soft – she’d be so soft under her touch – and so hard.

“ _Je n’ai jamais rien vécu de tel_ ,” Mattie says. She’s never experienced anything like this before _Elektra_.

Elektra lets out a burst of laughter and splashes water at her. Mattie responds in kind, a foreign call rising in her that feels like a joyous howl.

“Get me?” Elektra says, innocuous and girlish. It’s a game they play. Cat and mouse.

“I do, I get you,” Mattie says, because she likes riling Elektra up sometimes. Elektra’s breathing spikes, vexed.

“When are you gonna learn.” She kicks her leg at Mattie, vicious. “ _Get_. _Me_.”

Mattie snatches Elektra’s ankle amid the thrashing water and yanks her against herself.

“I have learned,” she says quietly. Elektra slowly licks her lip. Her breasts, rising and falling, almost brush Mattie’s. Elektra’s body…

“ _Hey!_ ”

Mattie jumps back from Elektra with a sick jolt. There’s—a _click_ , flashlight?, middle-aged breath, a man – the security guy – gun in a holster, angry.

“Shit.” She should know better than to let her guard slip. Stick taught her better. She’s getting careless, around Elektra.

“You can’t be here!” he yells.

Elektra’s snickering, floating without a care, and Mattie scrambles around, searching frantically for _something_. She doesn’t even have her _clothes_.

“I’m calling the cops!” the man blusters. “Stupid kids, I’ll teach ya—”

“Well, that’s our cue,” Elektra says brassily. “Last one’s fair prey?”

“My cane—” Mattie protests.

“Just hold my hand,” Elektra calls back.

She clutches Mattie’s hand, pulls her up the steps to the pool, water splashing everywhere, and they grab at whatever clothes they can reach, no shoes, tripping, and the guard is grappling with the gun – is he really gonna shoot at them, fuck, that’s hysterical – up the fence again, a bra sticking on the picket like a victory flag, and across the street, leg flailing on cool sand.

“I think the beach is closed too!” Mattie cries out, running who knows where, dropping clothes as she goes.

“Who cares!” Elektra shouts back, and throws her clothes over her head, falling all around them like strange rain.

Mattie grasps Elektra’s hand again, Elektra’s fingers looping with hers, then she’s pulled by Elektra’s impossible force toward the ocean, has to race with all her legs’ might so she doesn’t fall on her face. They’re shivering, naked and wet in the breeze, their teeth clanking, and Elektra is laughing before her, and Mattie laughs too, overtaken by that howling feeling.

“I LOVE YOU!” she whoops. She means that Elektra knows her better than she knows her own soul, and she wants to tell Elektra _everything_ ; she wants to tell her about the buried, burning world inside her and have Elektra understand without words, because of course she would, because she _does_ , Elektra gets her like no one else ever has, effortlessly, and she’s so, so incredibly lucky they happened upon each other. “Let’s never be apart!”

“I love you!” Elektra laughs. “Let’s run away together!”

“You’re my only real friend in the world,” Mattie tells her. Elektra laughs again and grasps her face with two hands.

“You’re precious,” she tells Mattie and kisses her.

Elektra tastes like chlorine and adrenaline sweat, _oh_ , and Mattie licks into her lips, wants to know every note of her like she’s tasting red-blood wine. But Elektra’s impatient, she won’t let Mattie luxuriate, she wants it harder, faster, _now_ , and she drags Mattie into her body, bites into her mouth like she wants to eat her whole, her fingers turn to talons on Mattie’s cheeks, and Mattie gets wrapped up in the immediacy, grabs onto Elektra’s waist – her skin is so soft, she knew, and vibrating with so much thrumming power – and holds on tight, feeling Elektra’s hot tongue and lips until she’s dizzy for air.

She takes a gulp of sea-salty breeze, swaying in Elektra’s arms. Elektra snakes her hand into Mattie’s hair and drags her down so she can bite at the vulnerable skin under her ear.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…” Mattie mumbles. She can’t think with Elektra’s mouth, Elektra’s wet, bare body sticking to hers so deliciously. She has to think. Where are her words. “What is—I’m not—it’s not—that is—”

“You’re everything you’re supposed to be with me,” Elektra whispers into her skin. “Don’t you feel it?”

And Mattie—Mattie’s been wrestling with herself for so much of her life. Too big, too spirited, _too heavy_ , always too much. She’s never fit into God’s idea of good, humility so incomprehensible to her, taking to obedience like a wild horse. She tried as she might, but the devil inside her is foreign to the role of a woman she was reared to fulfill, a nurturing, docile creature. Mattie’s always known she was born sinful.

Maybe this, with Elektra, is as close to Salvation as she gets.

“ _I love you_ ,” she says and kisses Elektra, and decides she’d rather choose to be damned. She does, she does, she does—she loves Elektra’s dear wicked lips, her disinhibited laugh, she loves Elektra’s wonderful, sexy body, and she loves this incredible _woman_ more than she ever thought she had the capacity to love. Maybe she’s just been looking for love in all the wrong places—with all the wrong people, all the wrong men, all the supposed-to’s to which she gave her best that shouldn’t be _so hard_. Falling in love with Elektra feels easy like the slip into violence and so, so right. Elektra falls into her heart like a missing shard Mattie needed to finally see her self.

Elektra chuckles softly against her lips. Mattie’s nipples are hard and she’s _hungry_ , but they’re still naked kissing in the middle of a beach.

Elektra detangles herself from her, in sync with Mattie’s thoughts like always, and pulls her in the direction of their forsaken clothes.

“Come on.” She yanks on her hand and springs off.

Mattie half-trips, half-runs, choking on laughter again. “Wait—fuck, I swear, you’re gonna be the death of me.” And in that moment, Mattie’s as sure as anything in Elektra’s arms she’d die gladly.

YOU ARE THE GIRL, the car blasts. THAT I’VE BEEN DREAMING OF! EVER SINCE I WAS A LITTLE GIRL! They’re both screaming their lungs out. Elektra is half-dancing behind the wheel, and Mattie wants to tell her to sit down, but Elektra’s already burning hot with tequila anyway, and for some reason it’s _so_ _funny_ to her, Mattie’s gasping the lyrics through crash-waves of giggles.

Elektra hits the breaks, wheels skidding on gravel driveway. Mattie’s neck wrenches and her skull snaps against the headrest, making her laugh harder. Her surroundings dance all around her and roll away like ocean waves; it’s dark, truly _dark_ , on the fringes of her perception, and she’s right _there_ , in the car with Elektra, and she doesn’t remember why she hasn’t been living like this all this time.

Elektra swirls the car key on her finger and flings it at her; Mattie’s hand snaps to catch it. _Tequila : 0, reflexes : 1._ Still got it. “Wanna take it for a spin?”

“I think it’s illegal, driving under the influence of blindness,” Mattie remarks, grinning. Elektra snorts and reaches under her feet.

“Of _course_. Safety first.” She waggles a tequila bottle at her. “Another?”

“How many make alcohol poisoning?” Mattie ripostes, even as she’s saying it unscrewing the cap and holding it out for Elektra to pour in. Elektra shrugs with some cheek.

“Who’s counting?”

Mattie throws the shot down and Elektra bites into her mouth before she can swallow. Mattie splutters, aspirating some of it, _fuck_.

“Jesus, I—fix your own drink.” Elektra’s laughing at her.

“None tastes as good as when I drink it from your lips,” she says, taking a hearty chug from the bottle; _from her lips, from between her breasts, from her bellybutton_. Mattie’s never felt the appeal of tequila. She’s a proselyte now.

They untangle themselves from the car, legs loose. Mattie trips and suddenly she tastes asphalt. She laughs swallowing blood; she thinks she may have broken her nose. Elektra pulls her up against the car, next to herself, and drops her head on Mattie’s shoulder. “Let’s do something crazy.”

Mattie snorts. Maybe not broken after all. “Like take shots and steal a car?”

“No, that’s boring.” Elektra pushes herself away and looks at her intently; Mattie struggles to focus on anything beside Elektra’s radiating aura. “Let’s _rob_ someone.”

“Yeah, let’s kill a man and go on the run from the law,” Mattie jokes. “Be Thelma and Louise.”

“Hm. I always thought it was a shame they didn’t lean more into the obvious sapphic undertone,” Elektra says consideringly. Mattie just snickers.

Elektra gets up and Mattie _groans_ , but accepts Elektra’s hand. She sways sideways perilously and Elektra holds her up; she must be less drunk than Mattie is.

“Hey, where are we,” Mattie mumbles, letting Elektra lead her. She seems to know where she’s going; that makes one of them.

“A house,” Elektra says cryptically.

Mattie shakes her head and tries to get her bearings, dragging on her feet. “Is it yours?” Elektra’s taken her to many of her family’s houses recently in their time together. All of them were grand and empty.

“God, no, I’d suffocate in the suburbs. No, this charming little chateau belongs to one of my father’s many work associates, who’s currently off to Monte Carlo, where prostitution is legal.” Thinking seems to come to Mattie slower than usual.

“So what are we doing here?”

“I told you,” Elektra says, chipper. “We’re gonna rob someone.”

Mattie stops.

“What?” Elektra turns to her and smacks her lips, as if Mattie’s behaving unreasonably childish.

“ _Relax_ ,” she drawls, dragging Mattie after her by the hand. “We’re not going to actually rob this place.” She gives a coy pause. “Just trespass a little.”

“More like break and enter,” Mattie retorts, letting herself be pulled. Elektra gives her a minor shrug.

“You’re the future lawyer.”

“Yeah, if they don’t expel me,” Mattie quips, even though it’s becoming a real concern. “Whichever will catch up with me first you think, all the absences or the felony charges?”

Elektra looks back then, momentarily stopping. She takes Mattie’s face in her hands with care. They’re cold.

“I’d never let you go to prison,” she says, a caress, but stone hard conviction underneath. “I’d bloody the streets with a trail of corpses to get to you.”

Mattie smiles, soft. “Yeah.”

Elektra lays on her a bruising kiss and smashes the glass front door.

They creep down the marble corridor, sneaking like little girls. Mattie’s holding her breath and that’s the only reason she hears a _thump_ upstairs.

Her stomach plummets.

“Someone’s here.”

Elektra gives Mattie a look from over her shoulder; there are footsteps, moving fast, _shit, shit, shit_.

“Daddy’s friend probably ran out of Viagra,” Elektra’s saying airily. Mattie tugs urgently at her hand.

“We need to _go_.” Her legs stay glued to the floor; _shit_ , how could’ve she missed this, _why_ did she think it was a good idea to have so many shots, alcohol always messes with her senses in a bad way.

“No, no, no, no,” Elektra hushes her, not worried at all; why isn’t she worried? “If I explain everything, he won’t be mad. I promise.”

“We need to—” Mattie whispers hotly.

“ _What the hell—_ ” the man’s going down the stairs, and shit, he’s reaching to get his _gun_ , and then _Elektra_ takes out a gun and says coldly, _don’t even think about it_ , and _what_ —

“What,” Mattie stammers.

“Mathilde, you remember Roscoe Sweeney,” Elektra says out of breath, and it’s from _arousal_. “The son of a bitch who killed your father?”

The world crashes down all around her.

Sweeney raises the gun and Elektra shoots. He cries out, paws at his shoulder—Elektra’s gun has a silencer, she has a _gun_ , Mattie hadn’t sensed she had a gun, Mattie’s thoughts make no sense…

“Get the rope, won’t you,” Elektra says, cool as anything. “It’s in the kitchen, under the sink.”

Mattie founders, leaning with her hand on the walls. Kitchen, sink… She stumbles into the first doorway, kitchen, half crawls to the cabinets and touches around blindly for a rope. When she comes back, Elektra kicks a chair to the middle of the room and jerks her chin at Sweeney. Gobs of saliva and blood bubble at his lips, a terrible gurgling sound.

“No funny business,” Elektra says. She lifts her head at Mattie. “Tie him up.”

“Oh, _Jesus_ —”

Mattie drags Sweeney’s lug body across the room – Elektra keeps her gun at him the whole time, he’s spitting blood, _God_ – and heaves him up on the chair. Her hands don’t feel like her own as she pulls the ropes around his arms, ties a knot and tests if it holds. It’s rushing through her head, _why_ is she doing it, and she can’t answer it, she can’t think about it just carry out Elektra’s commands, all her brain functions shut down on her.

“When I get out of this—” Roscoe seethes when Mattie steps back. “Oh, I’ll remember your faces.” Elektra chuckles as he rasps. “Every single bit of them—” He wheezes. “I will hunt you!”

“Aw,” Elektra coos, closing on him. “ _When_ you get out?”

Roscoe grunts; something _awful_ is moving in his lungs.

“You planned this,” Mattie says blankly. “You—where did you find him?” When? _Why_?

“Monte Carlo,” Elektra says, blasé. “I wasn’t lying. He’s been going by an alias for years now.” And in the middle of all this, under the white fog, Mattie finds it in herself to think a little hysterically, _Roscoe Sweeney is_ not _an alias_? She clamps down on a spurt of urge to laugh. “Al Marino.” Elektra leans in to him and clicks her mouth like you’d do talking at a baby. “An ugly name for an ugly man,” she spews.

“Oh, you’re dead,” Roscoe growls. Elektra steps back, laughing breathlessly. “Both of ya! Couple of bratty lassies on a thrill spree!”

“Hey!” Elektra cuffs his throat with the gun. The gun with the _safety off_. “Watch your tongue. While it’s still attached.” She’s smiling, Mattie can tell. Sweeney’s hemorrhaging in the middle of his own hallway, and she’s got a loaded gun on him, and she’s _smiling_. And Mattie can’t find the capacity in herself to care.

“He tried to hide,” Elektra tells her, almost business-like. “Went underground. But the scum always rises.” She addresses Roscoe then. “Al just couldn’t stay anonymous. He had to spend his blood money,” she says, sweetener-fake. “Make a splash. Be the big man. You made it easy for me.”

“Eat shit,” he bites out. Elektra whips his throat with the gun, harder this time.

“Want me to hit you again?” she asks, a distant inbreed kind of benevolent. She straightens up. “Well, I won’t.” She directs her gaze at Mattie. “But she will.”

Thunder rumbles. Mattie clenches and unclenches her fists. The whole thing is surreal.

Roscoe laughs out horribly, spluttering on it, and laughing through it too. “ _Her_? I don’t know where you got this Mary’s lost lamb from, but little girl better run home to her daddy before she gets a belt licking. Give me a break.”

In that moment, an eerie calm descends on her, like giving yourself into a stoic kind of inevitability. Her emotions grow distant and close and distant again, and her senses brighten with vibrant red and fire-ginger.

“You don’t remember me,” she says quietly. Roscoe gargles uncomprehendingly. “You killed my dad.”

“Well, I hate to break it down to you, sweetheart,” Roscoe snickers, “but I killed a lotta girls’ daddies.” Mattie floods with rage and that absolute calm, she’s floating in the empty spaces of the foyer outside her body and is uncannily aware of all her muscles in a way she hadn’t been just a second before.

“Then let me help you.”

She steps out to Sweeney; she feels like her legs should be shaking, but they’re not. She’s not.

“He hit hard,” she says, like she’s confiding in him. “Like this.”

And the devil, that endlessly hollow creature inside her, takes over. Bone breaks under her knuckles, Elektra’s breathing grows labored, fire, fire, her fists are on fire, Roscoe’s head snaps-snaps-snaps, she’s pummeling a bag at Fogwell’s, she’s vengeance, Elektra’s laughter reverberates like bells, cartilage crunches and Mattie can’t tell where Roscoe’s pain ends and her rage begins.

Her fists uncurl, curl at her sides; her hands are trembling. Roscoe spits, a tooth clatters on stone floor.

“You call this hard?” he gurgles out. His lung may be collapsing and he’s still not taking her seriously. Mattie’s sinking into hopelessness, her body shrinking in size, so damn foolish; the devil snips its jaws at her. “You’re in over your head, girlie. This is big boys’ games.”

Elektra takes a hold of her face and drags her against her own. Mattie can’t tear herself away but tries to lean on Elektra’s forehead instinctively, get any support she can. “Let it out,” Elektra says breathily. She’s gasping like she felt every hit Mattie dealt herself. “Let it out. Okay? That black need you’ve tried to keep inside you. I _know_ you. You and me are the same, yeah? You don’t have to hold in all your darkness with me, I have it too. You don’t have to hold in anymore.” Mattie blinks uselessly. “Do it for you father, Mathilde,” Elektra says, more insisting. “Do it for us.”

“‘ _Mathilde’_?” Mattie’s stomach lurches. Roscoe chortles with dark delight. “You’re Battlin’ Jack’s girl! Oh, you amateur.” Roscoe bares his teeth like a rabid dog and Mattie falls down, down. “Now I know your name. Nothing will stop me from showing you just what we do in this business to stupid girls who want to play at being gangsters.” Roscoe is retching, aspirating blood, still triumphant. “You’re gonna _wish_ I did you like I did your old man!”

Then an answering yell rises in Mattie’s throat, or maybe it’s the devil. And they bang, bang, bang, rain down Hell’s fire on Roscoe’s head, swelling up like hungry foam. Elektra laughs, grips her own hair in ecstasy. Mattie pounds thump- _squish_ -crack, but she can’t find release, the devil tears with its teeth at her skin, but can’t claw out. Roscoe might as well be dead meat. Her fists go down, no air, her chest is being ripped apart.

“ _Yes_ ,” Elektra gasps.

Blow, grunt. Mattie’s shaking. Elektra’s shaking too, and she’s all in her space.

“End it,” she whispers. She’s inhaling in bursts, exhaling. Her upper lip is tremulous, something wild. “End it now.”

“What?” Mattie feels like slipping on slick ground, losing purchase. Can barely make voice through that wet thing in her throat.

“Keep going,” Elektra urges. But Mattie finds she’s got nothing left. Here is Roscoe Sweeney, the man who killed her father, halfway to dying. His life tethering in the weak grip of her hands. But her fists are too heavy and her body’s hollow and drained. He’s still the implacable force that took her dad from her; he’s still, he’ll always be, the man who gave the word. Her dad is still dead. And she’s still the helpless, _stupid_ , little girl, and she ain’t got it in her.

“Nno, that’s, uh—” She sniffles. “No, that’s all I got.”

“He knows your name,” Elektra reminds her.

“No—” Mattie stutters.

“He’ll never stop hunting us.” Elektra gets a hold on her, touches her almost tender. Pressing. “Snap his neck.” She grips Mattie’s hands. “Kill him.”

Mattie shakes herself. “What?”

“Kill him,” Elektra pleads, moans.

“I—” Her voice breaks, shivering. She’s cold. Is it cold? “I can’t do that.”

Elektra sighs dreamily. “He’s just a man. He _killed_ your father. We can do anything together.” She’s earnest, reassuring in her own way. “Remember?”

Elektra’s skin is _reeking_ with adrenaline. Her pulse is ringing like a Church bell, racing like a street car, _true_ , and her hands are not shaking. She’s not really drunk—she never were, Mattie’s reeling from terror and alcohol, she’s trembling, but it’s never been about recreational thrill for Elektra, or deliverance, or revenge, Mattie’s desolate again and Elektra’s rapturous, she’s ravenous, thirsting for blood.

Elektra wants her to kill, because for her killing is the ultimate freedom, release from the confinement of suffocating mores she could never fit herself into, not whole, denouncement of all that she feels denounced by. Isn’t that what she was trying to tell her all along? She wants Mattie to know her, let herself be known for the creature she really is.

A hunter.

And the thing is, Mattie understands Elektra, truly understands her at last. She sees Elektra like she’s seen her first in her life, _sees_ her soul whole.

And Mattie’s heart _breaks_.

“No,” Mattie says, firm. It feels like a death. It feels like a killing. “I can’t.”

Elektra retracts from her as if wounded.

“I thought you understood me,” she says, heart-wrenching betrayal in her voice.

Mattie wants to reach out, cradle this shaken, _lonely_ , strange creature. Whoever Elektra is, she’s only ever been searching for a kindred soul so she wouldn’t be so terribly alone.

Mattie’s alone now too.

“Yeah,” she says, heart and soul heavy, and void. “I thought I did too.”

Elektra breathes in sharply like she’s swallowing crushed glass. It would be easier if Elektra wasn’t mourning too. If she was heartless.

There’s a part of Mattie, a wretched, ugly part, that wants to take this back. Let Roscoe Sweeney choke on his blood maybe, let him die if she can’t make her hands kill, let the blood flow free out from his veins onto the cold floor. She wants to pull Elektra into her, whisper reassurances, _I can be this, for you, maybe,_ I can be like you, feral and cruel. Because there is a part of her that understands, a part that answers Elektra’s call with a hungry howl of its own. The devil, maybe, or just sinful wickedness that’s all her. Elektra sniffed it in her. They both recognized each other. There’s a part of her, like Elektra, that’s a beast among people, not wholly broken-in.

But Mattie _wants_ to be good enough for this world. She’s terrified by that vicious thing that lives in her. Elektra doesn’t want to deny her bad core.

“We need to call the police.” Mattie stumbles to a phone. It takes her tangling fingers a few tries to hit the buttons. Line ringing. She lets out an exhale, trying to expel the weight of all their shared sins.

“ _911, what’s your emergency_?”

A gust of cold wind blows past her. Mattie raises her head, still, stupidly still, holding out for something.

But Elektra is gone.

Elektra surely leads the way through the underground town of all the people forsaken by her city. Mattie trails behind. Rusty old railway tracks, filth souring unwashed bodies, pipes leaking, maybe rainwater, maybe piss, whispers, hushed voices, faraway groaning that sounds more wild than human. Ghost city. Tents, provisional bunks made out of cardboard and dirty rags, hung like laundry curtains, walls that are only walls out of necessity, to preserve a shred of privacy for the inhabitants squatted on top of one another in too-close quarters. Yet people live here; squatting in the darkest, dankest nooks and crannies, in the sewers and among waste, out of sight, hiding deep in the holes no one’d think to look, like vermin—but vermin is only that in the eyes of humans, an unwanted byproduct of industrialized civilization, yet it’s just living beings, surviving on crumbs society throws them with waste, adapting, prevailing against all efforts to squash them. And there’s so much life here – a grim life, life whose only aim is survival, but life nonetheless – so many heartbeats, so many stifled breaths, dense over-crop of nests weaved out of scraps of another kind of life, and mementos, and crude utilities, and myriad objects infused with magic-thinking and loving tenderness, so much life squished into this little space that all Mattie’s senses are brimming with vibrancy. If the overground New York City is bristling with life, this one’s reverberating with echoes of it.

It’s a monument to the preservation of the human spirit, but a grim one. The people will prevail, but they’ll do so in darkness. A city as brilliant as New York casts an especially bleak shadow; she’d like to think it’s a necessary price to pay, but it’s not, it doesn’t have to be. Are those not my people too? Mattie thinks. Are they not New Yorkers, the ones most egregiously abandoned by the system? Don’t they need someone to protect them, even more desperately than her home Hell’s Kitchen does?

But Mattie has the devil in her and her clever, _useless_ words. How could she ever help anyone when she can’t save even herself?

With Elektra, she can finally stop pretending. Doing _good_ – _wielding the_ law – has always been a child’s fairytale.

This doesn’t feel right though. It feels like they’re tourists and these people don’t deserve to be gawked at like their private freakshow. They’re just another facet, just another thing, comprising the penance for those found guilty of the sin of inconvenience; they should leave them in peace.

It’s a brutal rule of survival on the streets, even more so in the underworldly tent city, made harder by the scum that invariably scurries to the vilest underbelly of New York City beast. Small-time drug dealers and roughneck thugs scraped from the bottom of the crime food chain, looking for a cheap power rush in the only place they can ever matter. They, too, are just passers-through, but while Mattie and Elektra are tourists, their role is more that of a peddler, coming from a town afar, offering you everything you’ll never need. Maybe Mattie is unkind; self-medicating on junk drugs and dime-store liquor is the only thing some people have left. There aren’t many recreational outlets in this hard life of dehumanization and hunger, and desolate going out of your mind. You buy continuous sustaining one day a time.

“Should we be here?” Mattie says uneasily, her head chasing after every whisper-shadow. What she means is, _should we be courting danger_? She could defend Elektra from a couple testosterone-drunk men, probably, but not if they all rushed them at once. Elektra might have her agile feline-like moves and her fancy overpriced capoeira training, but she’s never been in a real fight.

Mattie’s never been in a real fight.

“Calm down,” Elektra says, chirpy as ever. “These underground tunnels are safer than Hell’s Kitchen back alleys.”

Mattie wants to ask her why then she feels like she’s gearing up for a fight.

“You ever notice how dealer scum always seems to be men?” Elektra says in a whisper that’s more gleefully conspiratorial than really discreet, inclining her head at the gangbanger vultures. They might be smoking crack and they’re listening to cellphone-speaker crackling white trash hip-hop and snickering, shoving around one another. Hanging out here probably constitutes a party for them. “God, imagine what sexual assault rate must be like for women here.”

The words lodge at the back of Mattie’s tongue, _probably not that far-off from sexual assault rate for blind orphaned girls in a bad neighborhood in this city_ , but. This is not what she ever wants to talk about. Not even with Elektra. (Especially not with Elektra).

 _We should go_ , begins forming on her lips, she can’t imagine what they could possibly find here, when the men take notice of them and Mattie abruptly realizes this is what Elektra was looking for all along.

“ _Oooo_ ,” they whistle at their sight. Elektra bares her teeth and walks on with her head high. “You lost, girl? This not a place for a good girl like you.” They’re talking to Elektra, who’s pretending not to listen, but Mattie can hear every nerve of her body go taut, attuned to their excited pants and lying in wait with deadly intent. One guy clasps a hand on his buddy’s shoulder and whistles, not even keeping his voice down, _Shit, I love when their arses do that when they wearing those fancy heel-boots, look at that thing_ move _._ “Hey, ma, what’s your number? I see you a classy lady, you lookin’ for a good time? My man here’s little shy—shut up—but he thinks ya a right stunner.” They snicker, it’s really a game for them, Elektra their private show, and Mattie knows what they’d really like to do to her if she ever took them up on their words.

“I don’t think so,” Elektra says directly, not cowed, emboldened by adrenaline – not even that, just keen interest. Mattie’s frozen, half a step behind her, invisible, crawling with sick mortification and self-loathing. One of the men’s thrusting his hips obscenely.

She wants to tug on Elektra’s sleeve, tell her not to be crazy, don’t antagonize them, her arms and legs deadened and not working right. You know how to fight, she reminds herself. You _like_ to fight. Skin off your back. These guys are the ones who are pitiful, they’re _nothing_ , you’re gonna laugh at them yet, looking back. Move your limbs. Unstick your deadweight tongue from your palate, _unclench_ your rusted jaw. Don’t be fucking useless prey.

She’s not even that. She’s just a no-use bystander.

“Oi, she a ice queen!” Mattie doesn’t have to see to feel their leering grins. “C’mon, babe, don’t be like that. I’ll treat a right. What you say, ma, we get hitched.”

Elektra stands tall, faces them off with something lofty in her posture, not even pretending she’s trying to evade them anymore. “Oh? And which one of you big boys will be actually marrying me?” she says, all reticent mirth, almost coquettish.

“Real woman like you, reckon there’s enough of you to go around,” the seeming leader says brashly; he’s lanky and vaguely rat-like, his head shaven, with a fake gold chain that weighs half as much as he does. Mattie senses grills on his rotting teeth. Not enough flossing and too much meth.

Elektra scoffs archly. “I think between all of you, you couldn’t get it up to satisfy a woman,” she jeers.

The atmosphere changes, like a flip of a switch. Their heady lust-laced testosterone Mattie tastes on her tongue abruptly turns aggressive.

“What d’you say, cunt? What you say to me?” Mattie tightens her hand in Elektra’s blouse.

“We should go,” she murmurs. Elektra ignores her, throws her hair over her shoulder proudly.

“Look at that, Mathilde,” she coos mockingly. “Masculinity is so fragile. It’s sad.”

They’re rousing now, bracketing them for real. Under their grunting runs a live undercurrent of danger and Mattie notes the brass on a man’s knuckles, can’t stop counting the threats, the hidden switch-blade, another, a baseball bat leaning against a metal can. A gun. She catches herself running strategies to get them out.

“C’mon, boys, we teach the uptown bitch some respect.”

“ _Elektra_ ,” Mattie hisses. Elektra runs a coaxing hand down her back, not taking her gaze off the men. Not bulging.

“Don’t be so skittish, Mathilde,” she purrs. “They are weaklings, not even in our class. You know I don’t like to back down from a good fight.”

It’s then that one of the men turns to Mattie; she merits his attention at last.

“She yo fucking girlfriend or what,” he barks. He squints his teary – _high_ – eyes at Mattie. “You a fucking dyke?”

And Mattie _hates_ , _hates_ herself for the gut-deep shame, for wanting them to look at her like they look at Elektra, to shout obscenities at her and brag about the things they’re going to do to her, to want to _take_ her, and make her feel like a woman, not this pathetic, _defective_ sexless thing.

Elektra tips her chin up and her voice turns cruel. They’d kick Mattie to the ground until she bled from the inside but they’d want to take their time with Elektra, and Mattie shouldn’t, shouldn’t be envious of her, it’s nothing anyone should ever want, but she is, God, she is. “That’s not a nice word.” Elektra clicks her lips. “Has _mummy_ never taught you manners? She’d be so disappointed to hear her little boy speak to a woman like this.” The leader gets up in her space.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” he growls. Elektra spits at him.

“Gahh!” He paws at his face. She got him in the eye. “Fucking cunt!”

“Let’s _GO_ ,” Mattie says and seizes Elektra’s hand, jerking her wherever, anywhere, _away_ , and Elektra’s laughing, running with her. The men are shouting behind them, getting up, picking up the baseball bat, wresting with the gun tucked in the back of their pants, fuck, Mattie runs in truly blind frenzy, pulling Elektra after her, careless, _infuriating_ Elektra, who’s still elated, like it’s a game to her, and prays to God she can lose them in the labyrinth of NYC tunnels. But it’s a maze and she doesn’t know where she’s going, and it’s their prowling ground, and—

“ _Get them!_ ” the leader shouts, and he’s got the gun now, and Mattie skips a corner, slipping on slick floor, cornering a narrow tunnel with sparse flickering light overhead. Darkness is her country.

“Slow down,” Elektra calls out to her and she’s having the time of her life; Mattie rounds another corner, another narrow tunnel, the shouts of the men echoing on the cement walls, still after them, she can feel their feet snapping at her heels as she’s racing to get them _out_.

She doesn’t know how long they’ve been running; the time doesn’t work right here, in these underground catacombs, damp, alone and cold, and smelling of must and plaster. Like remembrance smells – a solemn smell. It might as well be hours; but the fire in her lungs is not immediate enough, so it must be a trick of her unreal mind. At some point the men’s yells have weaned away, but Mattie keeps on maundering the maze, marches on her dragging feet, wanting to put as much distance between them and the whooping pack of men as possible. After a while, she doesn’t know how long, Elektra pulls on her hand and stops. Mattie slows and stumbles with an arm on the dirty cement wall for purchase. Elektra puts her hands on her thighs, panting.

“Why _the hell_ did you do that,” Mattie pants out. Elektra straightens up; Mattie has an impression she’s grinning with all her pointy teeth.

“Because it’s fun.”

“You call that fun?” Mattie pushes up and gathers herself. “I don’t even know where we _are_.”

She’s not looking forward to be wandering the subway tunnels, lost for hours. She swallows a desperate rise of stupid tears.

“I do.” Mattie stares at Elektra vacantly. “Come on.”

She follows Elektra, reserved, keeping a step’s distance. “Seriously, what is wrong with you.”

“So many things,” Elektra says cheerfully.

When they finally get to the street level Elektra stretches her spine, like a cat after good hunting.

“What do you think,” she murmurs consideringly, luxuriating in every aspect of it. “Does this sound like an acceptable getaway car?”

“This isn’t funny,” Mattie says, not letting herself acknowledge the car Elektra indicates. It sounds expensive. Of course it sounds expensive. “I don’t feel like joyriding with you at the moment.”

Elektra hums noncommittally, not dissuaded by Mattie’s small show of defiance.

“It’s a dangerous neighborhood,” she says, like she’s _concerned_ after all this. “Not a place for a woman walking home all alone at night.”

As if to back up her words, a guy shouts _nice boobs_! across the street. Mattie grits her teeth.

Elektra gets in the car like she owns it, and she already has the keys, _that little minx_ , she’s planned it to the last detail. She hits hard on the accelerator with Mattie barely in her seat, sending her off balance. As they speed away, the man growls at them like a dog.

“God,” Mattie says. Elektra flicks her tongue distastefully and raises one dainty middle finger.

“We should really just kill all men,” Elektra says.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for dropping in! Leave a comment maybe!


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